This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
Electronic payments became the widespread means for conducting payment transactions around the world. Many consumers have begun to utilize electronic wallets (also known as an e-wallet, a digital wallet, and a mobile wallet) for paying for their purchases at retail stores and online as a more secure and convenient way of conducting payment transactions. For example, an e-wallet can typically be used in a manner similar to a contactless payment card in “tap-to-pay” point of sale (POS) transactions with a customer tapping his or her electronic device (such as a cellular phone or mobile device) with an electronic wallet application installed thereon against a merchant's POS terminal to pay for goods or services he or she wishes to acquire.
An e-wallet can be thought of as a platform/system/service with three main components: (1) an electronic infrastructure, typically supported by an e-wallet service provider (e.g., a payment network provider such as MasterCard®, a mobile network operator—MNO, a financial provider, or the like), (2) an electronic device, which serves to replace a regular wallet with payment cards, cash, and/or a check book, and (3) an e-wallet software application installed on the electronic device to enable the user of the electronic device to use it as a payment device in payment transactions. Many e-wallet platforms store payment credentials of the user directly in the hardware of the electronic device, such as in a secure chip or a subscriber identification module (SIM) card. Once the user registers for the e-wallet service, along with his or her accounts such as credit cards, the user is able to use the electronic device to pay for his or her purchases at participating merchants.
Many different forms of electronic wallets are available to consumers. An e-wallet may, for example, be solely a software solution (e.g., PayPal®)) with the payment credentials being stored in the cloud and payments being processed using transmission protocols that could be executed by software-only solutions. Some e-wallet platforms, however, implement the software-hardware approach instead and store the payment credentials in the hardware of the electronic device, such as in a SIM card. In a typical “tap-to-pay” transaction, such an e-wallet application provides the payment credentials from the electronic device to the POS terminal using the near field communication (NFC) technology.
Further, some e-wallet platforms, (e.g., Google® wallet), in order to avoid dependence on SIM cards, and consequently MNOs, store the payment credentials in the cloud and utilize the hardware-based NFC technology for transmitting the payment credentials from the electronic device to the POS terminal. Another example of an e-wallet platform, Apple Pay™, embeds its e-wallet directly into the operating system of the electronic device and uses a secure, SIM-independent, memory chip for storing the payment credentials.
Typically, an e-wallet platform does not expose actual account numbers to merchants. To achieve this, aliases of actual accounts, such as tokens, are stored as the user's payment credentials by some e-wallet platforms. Furthermore, most of the c-wallet platforms incorporate additional authentication mechanisms (security features) for authenticating users conducting payment transactions. Such authentication mechanisms include a personal identification number (PIN), a fingerprint, a password, a pre-defined swiping gesture, and/or other security feature(s) and may be enforced by the e-wallet application in order to complete a payment transaction.
An e-wallet is a convenient and secure way to pay for goods and services. However, person-to-person, customer-to-business, business-to-customer, or business-to-business payment transfers typically follow a more traditional approach, such as a person (payer) going to a bank or logging-in online to set-up a transfer of funds to a desired party (payee). Such transfer set-ups often require detailed information from the payer about the payee and the payment transfers themselves may take several days to clear, particularly when made from the payer to the payee for the first time. This approach lacks mobility, fluidity, and convenience of the above-described e-wallet platforms, and is time-consuming and inefficient.
Accordingly, there is a need for methods and systems to enable payment transfers between payers and payees in a simple, direct manner that does not require special trips to a bank by the payer, or detailed information about the payee. There is a further need for methods and systems that enable payment transfers in a secure manner and without substantial delays in transfer of funds between the parties that are so common to bank transfers.